¶ Writings on Anglicanism, liturgy, sacred music, and the life of the church.

26th May: For the Feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury

O Lord our God, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thine apostles and send them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless thy holy name for thy servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating thy Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom thou dost call and send may do thy will, and bide thy time, and see thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

the ruins of St. Augustine's Abbey, founded by Augustine in 597 prior to the establishment of the Cathedral.

If you have found anything, in the church of Rome, or of Gaul, or any other church, which may be more pleasing to Almighty God, I wish you to choose carefully, and teach the church of the English, which is as yet new in the faith, whatever you have been able to learn with profit from the various churches.

— Pope St. Gregory the Great, writing to St. Augustine in response to his discovery of liturgical practices at odds with what he was accustomed to in Rome.

I will resume Ruminations eventually, but this summer I have been overwhelmed with 1) our national agony and 2) preparing a new book: The Once and Future Season: Sermons and Essays for Advent (Eerdmans). When I finish, I will resume Ruminations.In the meantime you can check me out on Twitter @flemingrutThank you so very much for your interest.Lord, have merc […]

I have run some of the same analyses on the Diocese of Washington, and have come up with some quite surprising results: although some of the aggregate numbers are similar, the details are almost entirely different. Let's start with some geography, and then some history. The diocese of Washington was carved out of the Diocese of Maryland because what at […]

Plainly and without question, both the hatred and prejudice expressed last night in Charlottesville and the attack on counter-protesters today are murderous acts. Neither the words nor the actions of these self-styled supremacists are protected by the Constitution. Nor is there any way in which to justify behavior of this kind as even remotely “Christian.” […]

Can you imagine what our congregations would be like if we kept God's words in our hearts? If we taught our children about God's great love for us as revealed in the scriptures? If we publicly proclaimed the scriptures?

There's been a lot of ink spilled in the last year or two on "fake news." It's been interesting to chart the development of the term, which began, originally, as an effort to identify the planting of actual fake news stories, either intentionally (through malicious intent) or unintentionally (through Seen a lot of sci-fi, but missed this […]

I think I’ve thought this out loud before, but it’s worth saying and pondering again… We have to recognize the reality that the church in America finds itself in. Our own church is shrinking. The age-cohorts of clergy should be … Continue reading →

A bee-friendly corner near West Square in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017) Patrick Comerford While I was visiting the Hunt Museum last week and the exhibition of paintings by Jack B Yeats and Paul Henry, I noticed a small grassy area that is set aside and known as ‘The Bee Loud Glade.’This is a wild garden and the name and sign are the inspirat […]